Grief and Hope

Last updated on: December 9, 2018 at 7:50 am by Anne Kennedy

Grief and Hope 2018-12-09T07:50:51-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This is a beautiful and tragic piece that made the rounds a week or two ago. It, better than anything I’ve read yet, articulates the anguished cry of the world’s gasping and dying expectations. This is the malady of the west—that along the way the pursuit of happiness was subverted, somehow, to be all about experiencing actual happiness, as the advertisers foretell, and it’s lying cousin, Nostalgia. The two replace the rich breadth of human experience, expectation, and knowledge in an almost totalitarian sense.

I say expectation, of course, because it is Advent—a season of expectation, of enduring the unhappy collision of what you want with what God has already given. You look at the state of your own self, as honestly as you can, and what you wish you could have, who you wish you could be, and then face down God’s answer. It’s not the business of wondrous merriment, of magic and sparkle. It is the dark hope of looking at the Truth and finally accepting it, without any more excuses or stories about how it doesn’t apply to you.

Which is the collision of Christmas with Advent, or the Christian Life with the World, or your own plans for God and his plans for you. You want life to go one way, you want the problems to be outside of yourself, but God rejects that diagnoses utterly and insists that you are the one who must be healed, never mind everybody else. Instead of a King to make your material circumstances better and to make you happy, he sends John the Baptist to indict you, to tell you how you’ve gone wrong and that you must turn away from all your inclinations and plans.

Part of being an Anglican in Advent is having to peer at a person nobody even knows about, who came on the scene suddenly and then disappeared, whom Malachi forewarns will be “a refiner’s fire.” You go, as I complain every week, from the mad hue and cry of shopping for the sparkly belief in a single happy day, of beating back the darkness for a few minutes with Stuff, into church where you have to look at John’s lean, desperate face. The preacher reminds you, if he is doing his job, that the world didn’t want John and they didn’t want Jesus, and that if you think he’s come to give you a good time you’re wrong. Align your expectations with God’s divine, provident plans. He came to save you, but do you even know that you need to be saved.

Christians at Christmas suppose themselves to be all about hope—and peace, and joy. But go back and read that article, if you didn’t, and relish the haunting beauty of this line,

But in my experience, at least: Dysphoria feels like being unable to get warm, no matter how many layers you put on. It feels like hunger without appetite. It feels like getting on an airplane to fly home, only to realize mid-flight that this is it: You’re going to spend the rest of your life on an airplane. It feels like grieving. It feels like having nothing to grieve.

Indeed, if you’re doing it right, this ought to be your upward trajectory toward Jesus, your grasping and haunting journey from the manger to the garden to the cross, your desperate hopelessness when his own body was laid, heartbroken, in the grave. This is the human way, the wanting something that you cannot have.

The continual relentless knowledge of something that you know you ought to have, that you were designed to inhabit, but that you cannot grab a hold of in this life.

This is why the incarnation is so stunning, and why God can never be called upon for any revolution. He is never going to go along with your agenda for a better world. Because look how he came—into the painful and terrible limitations of human flesh, the perverse psychic trauma of having a body and a soul that you know were supposed to live perfectly together, never to be severed or undone. He took on flesh because he, having once created it, then watched its tumultuous destruction, the ravages of sin and rebellion taking over what was created for peace. He took it back and endured its grief, even unto death.

But not for the sake of death. Not for a wound that would never be healed. No, rather to utterly undo, unravel, unmake the separation of the body from the spirit, to trample down and destroy death itself. The body—his body, your body, the corporate and mystical body of the church, united and at peace—is why you go and sit, fixed in place, waiting in expectant hope for the only one who can restore the one to the other—God to man, God to woman, God to humanity, and even you to yourself.

Previous Post

December 6, 2018

What Happens When I Stay Up Late

Next Post

December 10, 2018 Everything You Love Is Wrong Podcast and Links

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the Hebrew word 'Shekinah' mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Everlasting Light Holy Fire God’s Glory Divine Presence

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »